Thursday, September 04, 2008

Using the Google Static Maps API

Update: The maps listed in this post no longer exist. If you wish to use the Google Maps Static Maps API in your won website you can find out more on the Static Maps API website,

we♥places (Dead Link Removed)
we♥places is a social sharing site for bookmarking addresses and locations. Registered users can add photos and comments about locations and anyone can explore areas they are going to visit for other users' bookmarks.

The site uses the Static Map API to enable really fast load times and then utilises the Google Maps API for displaying multiple markers at once. The Google Geocoder API is also used to geo-code locations.

To search for bookmarks you just enter the location name in a search box and the location is shown on a Google Map with the bookmarked places tagged on the map. The tag then contains a link to the page of the bookmarked location.

Maps on Paper (Dead Link Removed)
Maps on Paper is a simple but very useful application to convert Google Maps and Google My Maps into something more printer friendly.

The site is very easy to use. All you do is enter the map link of your Google Map or Google My Map into a search box and the application creates a printer friendly static map of your map.

On the first page (for your printer) is a map overview showing a map containing all of your tags. A list of the tags on the map is presented under the map.

On the following pages individual maps for all of your tags are shown. After that comes a page of your tag descriptions.

There are options to include or exclude the descriptions and the overview map. Most importantly everything prints beautifully.